lead to a law enforcement sweep of my home, would they be able to still determine even a trace of formaldehyde in, say, the ring around my sink, or trapped in my pipes? I honestly didn’t know; such things never came up in medical school.
I would have to remove the solution from my unit. Take it elsewhere for disposal. As well as the strips of skin, the glass vials, the box.
A mall. A large public space where I could visit many stores as well as public bathrooms without arousing suspicion. Maybe discard one item here, one item there. Then maybe a trip to the grocery store. A woman, just running her errands.
It could work. As long as I was calm and inconspicuous, and remembered there were cameras everywhere. If there was one thing I had learned from my sister over the years, the best deceit was covered in layers of truth. Of course I went to that mall with the Ann Taylor store. Of course I picked up milk and bread. Why wouldn’t I do those sorts of things?
A rough plan forming in my mind, I took a calming breath and got to work.
Latex gloves. A larger, single glass container to hold all the formalin solution, maybe a mason jar? But that would look strange. Anyone who saw a woman walk into a public restroom with a glass jar filled with a mysterious liquid, especially in Boston, post–marathon bombings . . . Not going to work.
Stainless steel water bottle. I had four or five in my kitchen cupboard. I picked my least favorite, an innocuous metallic blue with black top, which I placed on the bathroom counter to my right. Added to that a quart-size sandwich bag, opened to my left.
Single strip of skin placed in the ziplock bag. Couple of tablespoons of solution poured into the water bottle. Quick work, really. A decade of collecting dismantled in less than fifteen minutes.
I sealed up the bag, then the bottle, both of which would fit easily in my oversize purse.
Of course, I now confronted the matter of the twenty-one empty glass vials.
I could wash them. Run them through my dishwasher, then remove them to my office. Glass vials in a psychiatrist’s office, not too strange. But would a trace of the formaldehyde remain in the rubber stopper? Not to mention my fingerprints . . .
Gallon-size freezer bag this time. Two of them. I removed the rubber stoppers, then double-bagged the glass vials. Then got out a stainless steel meat mallet and proceeded to pulverize the contents of the freezer bags, reducing the empty tubes to glass fragments small enough to flush down a toilet, at another stop along the routine errands/evidence disposal field trip.
The gallon-size bag also went into my purse, as well as a bag of rubber stoppers, to be tossed in a random Dumpster. The box was easy. It was, after all, only a shoe box. I removed the silk scrap, folded it up and placed it in my closet. The foam cushion I threw away. The box I broke down for deposit in my apartment building’s recycling center.
If any of those three items were traced back to me, what did it matter? Yes, Officer, I recognize that empty box. Used to have it in my closet. But I recently tidied up the place, throwing it away. End of story.
Done at last, I stripped off the latex gloves and placed them in my purse. I would throw them away as well, but at a separate location. Like a trail of guilty bread crumbs, scattered across the greater Boston area.
Then I washed my hands. Again and again and again. And I watched my fingers tremble and I told myself it was okay, I was doing the right thing, I did not have to be this person; I would not be this person.
Anyone could change. Even the deepest compulsion could be overcome with time and effort.
Then I walked into my bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed and cried.
Because my collection was gone and I didn’t know what would ever fill me up, get me through the bad nights, quite like that again.
I was alone.
A baby, strapped into a car seat and trapped in a dark closet, the entire world reduced to nothing but a thin sliver of ominous light . . .
Nothing to see but plenty to hear.
Understanding little but absorbing all, like little hobgoblins now stuck in the back of my mind.
Please, Harry, not the baby.
Suddenly . .